The Semiconductor Mobile SoC Leaders

Several companies have established themselves as prominent mobile System-On-A-Chip (SoC) technology players. The landscape is characterized by intense competition and rapid innovation, leading to the continuous evolution of SoC capabilities.

Some of the leading SoC vendors that are competing to capture a share of the mobile market are:

Qualcomm: Known for its Snapdragon series, Qualcomm is a significant player in the mobile SoC market. Its SoCs are renowned for their performance, energy efficiency, and integration of advanced features like 5G connectivity and AI capabilities.

Apple: Apple's custom SoCs, such as the A-series used in iPhones and iPads, are highly regarded for their performance and efficiency. Apple's control over hardware and software allows for optimized integration, resulting in impressive computational capabilities.

Samsung: Samsung Electronics, with its Exynos line of SoCs, is a key competitor in the market. These SoCs are used in various Samsung mobile devices and are known for integrating custom CPU and GPU cores.

MediaTek: MediaTek has gained significant market share, especially in the mid-range and budget segments. Its Helio and Dimensity series of SoCs balance performance and cost-effectiveness, making them popular among various smartphone manufacturers.

Huawei: Through its HiSilicon division, Huawei produces the Kirin series of SoCs. These chips are primarily used in Huawei's range of smartphones and are known for their AI processing capabilities and 5G technology.

Google: Google has entered the SoC market with its custom Tensor chip, which powers its Pixel phones. The Tensor chip focuses on machine learning and AI tasks, leveraging Google's expertise.

These companies have contributed to advancing mobile SoC technology through unique strengths and innovations. The choice of SoC often depends on the specific requirements of the device, including performance needs, power efficiency, connectivity options, and cost constraints....

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THREAD

Learn about chiplet - the most important More-Than-Moore (MtM) methodology by reading the article I pushed in the October issue of Commercial Micro Manufacturing Magazine.

LLM for chip design is going to be game changer. NVIDIA has taken the lead on this front. Their research team has published another paper showcasing how using LLM, HDL code can be generated. 

Reticle limit is 858mm2 and many of the NVIDIA's GPU is already touching 820mm2 in die size. Thus, raising concern about the next-gen GPUs that might overshoot the reticle limit. At that point, the masking process will be costly and it will add more complexity thus raising concerns about overall cost.

Many of the semiconductor companies are looking to grow their market by adopting custom silicon chip via coopetition process. Custom chip requires developing chips in-house and then ensuring there is a business strategy that combines competition and cooperation.

Semiconductor is soon going to be $1 Trillion industry and the key to achieving this milestones is by focusing on the critical verticals that will drive such a growth. Learn about which are such critical verticals.

SoCs for AI need to adopt new features to speed up the data processing and that is doable only by incorporating new memory or computing blocks. In this line, Processing-In-Memory (PIM) is one such solutions that has the potential to change the way industry looks at AI SoCs as it can speed up the processing at a speedy rate. Read about PIM based AI SoC in the article I published as part of November issue of Electronics For You (EFY) magazine.

VLOG

Watch the insightful video on how Semiconductor Marketing Engineer is and what the engineers work on.

Marketing engineers in the semiconductor industry merge deep technical knowledge of semiconductor products with a thorough understanding of market trends and customer needs. Their role involves explaining the technical nuances of semiconductor products and translating these features into benefits that meet specific market demands. This dual expertise is crucial in crafting compelling product narratives and positioning strategies that resonate with technical and non-technical stakeholders in diverse sectors like consumer electronics, automotive, and industrial automation.

The future growth of marketing engineers in the semiconductor industry is linked to the rapid technological evolution and expanding applications of semiconductors. As the industry shifts towards emerging technologies like AI and 6G, marketing engineers must continuously update their skills and adapt to new marketing technologies and strategies. Their role will become more strategic, involving more significant influence on business decisions and contributing to the overall growth and direction of the semiconductor industry.

GOVERNMENT

US Department of Commerce reaches agreement with new organization, SemiUS, to operate National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC) once established. a strong semiconductor research and development ecosystem that will enable the U.S. to be the world’s technological superpower.

Japan is planning to allocate roughly 2 trillion yen (US$13 billion) to support efforts to boost its chip industry, marking the latest move by the Asian nation to reclaim its past glory in the critical sector.

EU, India and Japan to jointly host "Semiconductor Research and Innovation" webinar on 22n November 2023. The 2023 Innovation Day event will be the first of its kind with an EU-India-Japan dimension, aiming at presenting notable projects and initiatives from all sides in the field of semiconductors and covering some of the recent collaboration developments, as well.

INDUSTRY

IDC is expecting semiconductor market to grow 20.2% in 2024 to $633 Billion. This guidance is in line with $1 Trillion market cap that the semiconductor industry is expected to achieve by end of 2030. As it seems, it might achieve this target well before 2030. 

Arm, its ecosystem partners and leading academic institutions have joined forces to launch the Semiconductor Education Alliance. Aim is to engage with key stakeholders to build and nurture thriving communities of practice in Computer Engineering, Informatics, and STEM education and research - from teachers and schools to universities, publishers, EdTech companies and research organizations.  

Synopsys has announced Synopsys.ai Copilot, a breakthrough GenAI capable of accelerating chip design. The new capability is the result of a strategic collaboration with Microsoft to integrate Azure OpenAI Service that brings the power of GenAI into one of the most complex engineering challenges - the design process for semiconductors.

ACADEMIA

Arizona State University has created hub of coursework for careers in booming microelectronics industry. The Microelectronics Workforce Development Hub lists more than 70 courses available to people across the life span — high school students, college-goers and workers who would like retrain for a new career. Many more courses will be added next year.

RESEARCH

2023 International Roadmap For Devices And Systems (IRDS) is available. 

The International Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) and its evolution to the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS) provided leadership and continues to play a key role in guiding implementation of such solutions.

Read and learn more about the industry from roadmap point of view.

TOOLS

imec has released a netzero virtual fab webapp, which gives a quantified view of the environmental impact of integrated circuit (IC) high-volume manufacturing for various technologies. With this tool, imec aims to help identify and classify high-impact environmental challenges in the industry and is one of the objectives of the sustainable semiconductor technologies and systems (SSTS) program.

ViennaPS is a header-only C++, OpenMP-parallelized process simulation library, focusing on all types of processing challenges for micro- and nanoelectronics. This tool is very helpful for research labs that often run into issues related to tools that can allow simulations of different microelectronic fabrication processes.

JOBS

NXP has several student and new graduate opportunities and the company is hiring across continents. Different types of opportunities at NXP:

CONNECT

Whether you are a student with the goal to enter semiconductor industry (or even academia) or a semiconductor professional or someone looking to learn more about the ins and outs of the semiconductor industry, please do reach out to me.

Let us together explore the world of semiconductor and the endless opportunities:

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